THE MIGHTIEST NIMROD OF MODERN TIMES. 349 



is lending his unparalleled experience to the Roosevelt hunt, he is 

 recognized as Africa's most indefatigable big-game pursuer since 

 he was a boy of fifteen. 



Yet, while he has tracked numberless herds of elephants for 

 their ivory tusks and faced scores of lions in deadly encounters, he 

 has never killed for the mere sake of killing. The greater number 

 of his shots have been fired for the prime need of man, food; and 

 during one period, extending over fifteen years, apart from the rice 

 which supplied the farinaceous portion of his diet, he lived exclu- 

 sively upon the game he brought down with his rifle. 



The quotation from Haggard's well-told incident in " Maiwa's 

 Revenge " closes fiction's account of Quatermain's unrelenting pur- 

 suit of the huge bull elephants that made the mouth of the veteran 

 hunter fairly water for their possession. He had wounded the larg- 

 est of them ; but, aided by his companions, the immense beast suc- 

 ceeded in escaping for the day. 



GOES BEYOND FICTION. 



Quatermain took up the hunt and stuck to it until his negro 

 followers, wearied and apprehensive, were on the verge of rebellion. 

 Then, in the night, while his men were all asleep, he heard the trum- 

 pet of an elephant. 



Alone, in the treacherous moonlight, he set out to stalk the dan- 

 gerous brutes. Endeavoring to surprise them, he was himself beset 

 by all three. By incredible agility and an amazing celerity of rifle 

 fire he slew every one. Next morning he enjoyed the dismay and 

 discomfiture of Gobo, the leader of the rebellious carriers. 



Such a hunting story is, ordinarily, readable only in fiction, 

 just as Haggard's account of how Quatermain shot a rhinoceros 

 through the horn would be taken to be the allowable license of the 

 romancer. 



But it is precisely here that the real Nimrod of Africa has 

 equaled, and often gone far beyond, the exploits of the unreal Qua- 

 termain. The mythical Macumazahn's adventures with elephants 

 and lions are no more thrilling than have been those which, in plain 

 fact, befell the real one; and if Colonel Roosevelt have in his com- 



